Intel has announced AI processor offerings to China

On July 11, Intel held a press conference in Beijing to announce the release of the deep learning processor Habana Gaudi 2 in the Chinese market, as the US moves to tighten export regulations on AI processors to China. The training and inference processes for AI can be sped up with this CPU. Giant Chinese AI server companies like Inspur, New H3C, and xFusion are anticipated to deploy servers with the Gaudi 2 CPU in them.

Chinese media reports that Intel’s Gaudi 2 was already released in May 2022 in the European and American markets. The Supermicro Gaudi 2 AI training server system will be introduced by Habana and American business Supermicro in the second part of 2022.

To comply with regulations, a tailored version of the AI processor is also intended for the Chinese market. Chen Baoli, general manager of China and vice president of Intel Data Centre and AI Group. In order to meet the current trend of large language models (LLM), Chen stated that Intel additionally optimised the software-level iterative computing capacity at the period when Gaudi 2 was introduced to China.

Inspur alone owned a 37% market share in the Chinese AI server market in 2022, while New H3C had 8%. With the help of xFusion, they are marketing Intel’s specialised AI processor, according to statistics from China-based Pacific Securities. This demonstrates how hard Intel’s Gaudi 2 is trying to compete in the Chinese market and offer a rival to Nvidia.

Despite being available in the American and European markets for more than a year, there have been no indications of widespread adoption for Intel’s Gaudi 2. Intel could be able to bridge the existing AI processing power disparity in China in the interim.

The most effective solution in Intel’s product line for LLM tasks, according to Sandra L. Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Centre and AI Group at Intel, is Gaudi 2. Additionally, Intel will revise its roadmap for data centre products, and it intends to combine high-performance AI processors with GPUs to create a more complete next-generation GPU product by 2025.

In 2016, an Israeli startup semiconductor business called Habana first came into existence. Major Chinese internet businesses now sell its products. Intel acquired the Gaudi accelerator after purchasing Habana for US$2 billion in December 2019. Major Chinese internet and cloud service providers were already familiar with Habana’s Gaudi processor before the purchase.

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